Few would deny the destructive power of storms. Booming thunder, flashes of lightning, and howling winds can cause untold damage and strike a primal fear in those near them.
As a Storm Sorcerer, you have harnessed this power.
Gifted with powers infused with the element of air, you can be a calming breeze to your friends or a destructive hurricane to your foes.
This is the full subclass guide to the Storm Sorcerer in D&D 5e!
What is the Storm Sorcerer in D&D 5e?
Bringing both shock and awe to the table, the Storm Sorcerer is the ferocious power of the storm made flesh.
The origins of their powers might come from being the descendant of a powerful Djinn from the plane of Air.
Maybe the Sorcerer was struck by lightning or thrown overboard from a ship during a storm. In a strange turn of events, the experience awoke some arcane power within them.
Whatever the case may be, the Storm Sorcerer knows the raw power of wind, rain, and lightning better than most. Beyond just knowing it, they have dedicated themselves to harnessing it to achieve their goals.
Hurling blasts of lightning or calling forth concussive booms of thunder, Sorcerers of this subclass are the storm incarnate.
The Storm Sorcerer can be found in Xanathar’s Guide to Everything.
Role in the Party
The Storm Sorcerer is in a bit of a strange place.
They are blasters who favor an aggressive playstyle. However, they don’t necessarily get any buffs that help them stick near the frontlines as you might expect from an aggressive subclass.
Remember: Sorcerers are one of the squishiest subclasses in D&D 5e.
You’ll have some extra mobility, but you want to be careful not to overextend yourself. The focus here is on playing defensively aggressive. Or maybe it’s aggressively defensive?
So Storm Sorcerers are blasters who rely on navigating the battlefield, playing “taser tag” with enemies who chase them, and blasting foes that group up like there’s no tomorrow.
Storm Sorcerer Features 5e
The Storm Sorcerer gets a lot of features that are meant to help them weave and zip around the battlefield.
You’ll want to grab every lightning or thunder damage spell you can get. As you might expect from the theme of this subclass, those are what power your features.
Related: Mastering the Sorcerer’s Metamagic!
Wind Speaker (Level 1)
Your attunement with the element of air gives you the ability to communicate with elemental beings.
You can speak, read, and write Primordial.
Knowing this language allows you to understand and be understood by those who speak its dialects: Aquan, Auran, Ignan, and Terran.
You’ve essentially just learned 4 languages!
If you’re interacting with creatures like Elementals or Genies, this can be useful. Primordial itself has four dialects depending on the associated element.
Language | Element |
Ignan | Fire |
Aquan | Water |
Auran | Air |
Terran | Earth |
Since Charisma is likely your highest score, this can be beneficial to you as the party’s face in situations where you’re talking to creatures who speak some dialect of Primordial.
Tempestuous Magic (Level 1)
Sometimes you need that extra bit of movement to help you line a spell up just right or get out of danger. For that, the Storm Sorcerer gains the Tempestuous Magic feature!
You can use a bonus action on your turn to cause whirling gusts of elemental air to briefly surround you immediately before or after you cast a spell of level 1 or higher. Doing so allows you to fly up to 10 feet without provoking opportunity attacks.
In theory, this feature is consistently useful. But mechanically it’s a bit situational.
If you’re using this to line up your spells, it can be helpful. Swooping into a group of enemies and then blasting them all with a Thunderwave can be very impactful.
Situations where you need this to disengage are a bit weird.
10 feet of movement isn’t much. If you find yourself surrounded and can’t get behind an ally with 10 feet of movement, the enemies will just move up and continue attacking you on their next turn.
However, this is 10 feet of flying so you might be able to use it to reposition onto a higher ledge or something where melee enemies won’t be able to reach you. In the right environment, you can use this for creative positioning.
This won’t take you as far as the Misty Step spell, which means it’s not quite the panic button that it seems to be at first. But, hey, at least it’s free!
Heart of the Storm (Level 6)
As the elemental storm within you grows stronger, you can harness it even more now! Your level 6 feature, Heart of the Storm, is broken into two parts.
You gain resistance to lightning and thunder damage.
Lightning is one of the more common types of damage that you’ll be encountering. Blue dragons, will-o’-wisps, and many spellcasters are just some examples of enemies that deal lightning damage.
Thunder damage is much more uncommon with only a small handful of creatures using it.
Whenever you start casting a spell of level 1 or higher that deals lightning or thunder damage, stormy magic erupts from you.
This eruption causes creatures of your choice that you can see within 10 feet of you to take lightning or thunder damage (choose each time this ability activates) equal to half your Sorcerer level.
On one hand, this might seem underwhelming.
Sorcerers are one of the squishiest classes so having enemies within 10 feet of them is not a good thing. Additionally, the damage is HALF of your Sorcerer level which means you’re dealing 3 damage when you get this up to a max of 10 damage when you hit level 20.
But there’s plenty of good with this feature as well!
Note that there’s no save or anything against this damage. I love guaranteed damage! If multiple enemies are within 10 feet of you, you can zap them all which makes this hit even harder!
If you’re feeling aggressive, you can use your Tempestuous Magic feature to swoop in on a group of weaker enemies and cast something like Thunderwave. Not only are they taking the damage from your spell, but each enemy has also taken some extra damage just from being near you!
Lining up plays with your allies will help you get more use out of this feature without overextending yourself!
Recommended: The Full Guide to the Sorcerer Class in D&D 5e
Storm Guide (Level 6)
Calling upon your Storm Sorcery, you are now able to control the weather around you.
If it’s raining, you can use an action to cause the rain to stop falling a 20-foot-radius sphere centered on you. You can end this effect as a bonus action.
If it is windy, you can use a bonus action each round to choose the direction that the wind blows in a 100-foot-radius sphere centered on you. The wind blows in that direction until the end of your next turn. This feature doesn’t alter the speed of the wind.
Any ship captain would be glad to have you onboard!
But beyond a campaign that sees you taking to the high seas, you won’t really be getting any use out of this.
The first part of this feature helps you to not get wet if it’s raining. There might be some situations where this is more useful, but there aren’t many that a raincoat couldn’t fix.
Being able to control the direction of the winds is very helpful on certain occasions. If you’re in a naval campaign this will be extremely useful in navigating storms and speeding up your travels.
Depending on how tactical your group is, being able to control the wind direction might help with siege tactic scenarios where you can help a fire attack be more successful against an enemy’s fortress.
Now that I think about it, I haven’t seen many DMs include natural disasters like tornados or hurricanes in non-naval games. It’s something that I don’t believe I’ve ever even incorporated.
I could see that being a great moment for a Storm Sorcerer to shine as they protect everyone within 100 feet of them from a tornado that’s ravaging the land.
Storm’s Fury (Level 14)
Enemies who attack you will soon find themselves being yeeted across the battlefield with your Storm’s Fury feature.
When you are hit by a melee attack, you can use your reaction to deal lightning damage to the attacker. The damage equals your sorcerer level.
The attack must also make a Strength saving throw against your Sorcerer spell save DC. On a failed save, the attacker is pushed in a straight line up to 20 feet away from you.
Enemies that get close enough to smack you are in for a shocking surprise.
Once again, I LOVE guaranteed damage. It might not be a ton at once, but it doesn’t cost you any resources (except for some hit points from their attack.)
The real draw here is the knockback.
Most enemies at this level have the multiattack feature. If an enemy has a movement speed of 30 feet and spends more than 10 feet to get to you with their first attack, you can shut down the rest of their attacks if they don’t have another target they can get to.
Not to mention, there might be some environmental hazards that you can push them into with this as well!
Between Storm’s Fury, Tempestuous Magic, and Heart of the Storm, you can play an electrifying game of “keep away” with your enemies!
Wind Soul (Level 18)
Things escalate very quickly when we get to the Storm Sorcerer’s capstone feature, Wind Soul.
You gain immunity to lightning and thunder damage.
You also gain a magical flying speed of 60 feet.
As an action, you can reduce your flying speed to 30 feet for 1 hour and choose a number of creatures within 30 feet of you equal to 3 + your Charisma modifier. The chosen creatures gain a magical flying speed of 30 feet for 1 hour. Once you reduce your flying speed in this way, you can’t do so again until you finish a short or long rest.
I absolutely love this capstone feature.
Flight in general is great but having a permanent flying speed of 60 feet is simply incredible! Between your flying speed and spellcasting, you’re like an arcane B-52 Bomber on the battlefield.
Not to cheapen the experience, you’re able to lower your flight speed to grant flying to your entire party (up to 8 people since you should have maxxed out your Charisma score).
This doesn’t cost you any sorcery points, spell slots, or anything! It doesn’t even require concentration!
Furthermore, immunity to lightning and thunder is great. As we mentioned earlier, lightning damage is certainly not uncommon.
At this level, you might even be gearing up to take on an Ancient Blue Dragon. Wind Soul means you can just laugh in the dragon’s face after it tries to blast you with its lightning breath!
As far as capstones go, this is fantastic. If you didn’t already feel like Storm from X-Men, you absolutely should now!
Connections
So how do you connect a Storm Sorcerer character to the game world and party?
Storms happen everywhere and seemingly without reason or care. When they do manifest, it’s impossible to ignore.
Your powers as a Storm Sorcerer have probably occurred to you in much the same way.
You might be embarking on an adventure in hopes that you can learn how to control them. You could do this by attempting to find a mentor, trial and error, or following some deep tugging in your heart.
Being able to affect the weather is especially helpful if you’re spending time at sea. You might have a background as a sailor or have at least spent a reasonable amount of time on ships.
Strange tides or curious stormwinds might then lead you to encounter the rest of the party towards a common goal.
Is the Storm Sorcerer Good?
Taken as a whole, the Storm Sorcerer is situationally good. In most cases, it will really struggle to stand out, but it can be very useful in specific situations or campaigns.
The last couple of features, Storm’s Fury and Wind Soul, are fantastic. Unfortunately, the 14 levels it takes to get to that point can feel like a massive slog.
If you’re playing a naval campaign, you’ll have a much more enjoyable time as a Storm Sorcerer.
Where this subclass really suffers is the availability of lightning and thunder spells. There aren’t quite as many as you would hope for in D&D 5e and the Storm Sorcerer doesn’t get any bonus spells for taking this subclass.
I recommend working with your DM to reskin some spells as lightning or thunder damage. Fire Bolt, Fireball, and other Sorcerer mainstays can easily be homebrewed to be lightning-based versions of the same spell.
Related: Every Sorcerer Subclass in D&D 5e Ranked!
Conclusion – Storm Sorcerer in D&D 5e
But at last, we have arrived at the shocking end of this guide to the Storm Sorcerer in D&D 5e.
Ok, maybe not necessarily shocking but I had to get one last pun in there. Don’t judge me!
Personally, I love how much flavor is in the Storm Sorcerer subclass. Not only has Storm been one of my favorite members of the X-Men for as long as I can remember, but this subclass is just a fun concept that gives you a ton to work with when it comes to your character’s style.
But what do you think?
Got a Storm Sorcerer concept you’d like to share? Let’s chat in the comments!
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